Monday, July 1, 2013

CRM for employees are mostly missing

Organisations have always tried to emphasise on external customers by investing in customer relationships management (CRM) software to provide the value-add to customers, to differentiate themselves. Research has shown that 86% of customers stop buying a product after a bad experience. However, organisations seem to mostly neglect one aspect of CRMs. Internal customers, a.k.a employees.

Seriously, it is extremely difficult for anyone to sell something that they do not believe in. If your employees do not believe in the organisation in the first place and that it treats you like "family", how do you sell the services and products effectively? Aren't employees internal customers of your products and services? Why are organisations not investing in "CRM for employees"? The same research for CRM also applies to employees.

Before someone plugs in an intranet social networking software and think that it will do the trick, just remember that software is only as good as the people who are using it. Having an intranet social networking software will give you the tool, but if you have no content or process to handle it, you might as well donate the money to charity. For example, are you giving employees the tools to provide feedback and to provide collaboration internally on the types of products and services available?

Do note that it is definitely possible for information from your intranet to flow to your CRM so that your frontline staff will be able to provide additional information to the customers from the discussions that you have internally, securely.

I guess people are looking too much at the bottom line to see the long term benefits.